I stumbled into live-blogging almost by accident. It was my first TGC conference, back in 2011. I was attending and took copious notes and decided to post them on my site. That was literally all the foresight that went into it. After that, I did it again at T4G in 2012. And I was invited to live-blog a couple of other conferences. Then I came back to TGC in 2013 and live-blogged the pre-conference and all but one session of the main conference.

Then, at T4G in 2014, I didn’t at all. Instead, I just took in the sessions, and made some notes for myself. I wound up sitting out of a couple sessions out of necessity. And it was great It was an actually relaxing conference experience. (Imagine that…)

So what am I doing this year?

Honestly, I’m probably not live-blogging it. As I’ve said before, live-blogging is fun, but it is a lot of work. But I’m not sure it serves the purpose it once did when livestreams weren’t quite as ubiquitous. And then there’s the whole problem of Internet connectivity…

My plan for this year is to continue with the sort of approach I took to T4G 2014:

I’m going to go to be flexible. I’ll go to what sessions I can, but I’m not going to lose sleep if I miss one. I’ll still probably write a ton of notes, but I’ll really only interact with the points that resonate most with me here. Most importantly, I’ll be spending more time enjoying the rare opportunity to meet with people whom I might not otherwise or only see at events like these.

Live-blogging has some benefits, for sure—particularly the immediacy factor for those who are best served by about reading for 10 minutes rather than listening to something for 45. However, a strategy like this helps me better keep my sanity.

Over the last few years of attending conferences, I’ve tended to live-blog them, taking copious notes and sharing them here in real-time or something close to it. This year, although I have no doubt I’ll be taking lots of notes, I’m not sure if I will be live-blogging at T4G. It’s hard work and fun work… but man, it’s a lot of work.

So here are a few reasons why I may or may not do it this time:

1. My notes tend to be more like on-the-fly, loosely paraphrased transcripts. I don’t catch everything, but I do manage to get about 80 percent of what’s said in a pretty faithful form. This is tricky to do, but I know a lot of people find them helpful.

2. I don’t want my note-taking to be distracting to other attendees. Conference venues like the Yum Center tend to not be set up to handle live-blogging well. And because my tendency is to not be a gentle typer, I am concerned about my clickety-clacking distracting the other attendees.

3. Not live-blogging gives a little more flexibility to my schedule. I don’t “have” to be there on time or at all, if something requires my attention elsewhere (I’m thinking a work or family-related emergency).

4. Sometimes it’s fun just to sit and watch. I’ve never really just sat back and watched at one of these. This might be a good thing to try.

5. Sometimes sharing the material online is fun, too. I’ve received a number of emails from folks saying they’ve found my notes helpful in the past, and I do appreciate having the opportunity to help others when possible.

6. There’s a livestream. The livestream is really handy and allows people to listen in as they go about their day.